Forever Herself: A Son's Memoir of a Remarkable Woman

By Kerry L Stevens and Berthella Stevens

A strong woman embraces life on her own terms, bringing blessings and tears.

Berthella Stevens is a Renaissance woman full of hope and ahead of her time in 1960s Indiana. While some women of her era feel stifled, she is unafraid to express herself, reveling in beauty, writing, and natural living. She relishes the freedom w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Six Points Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732426634

Kerry L Stevens

Kerry L Stevens is the lead author of Forever Herself: A Son's Memoir of a Remarkable Woman. His late mother, Berthella Stevens, is the contributing author. Kerry fuses Berthella's prose and poetry with his memories of their unique relationship to tell the endearing tale of his maverick mom. Kerry's literary journey began in third grade with an illustrated book of flying saucers written on thick, manila paper bound together with white paste. Since writing that first book and growing up in Indiana farm country, Kerry has written dozens of essays for his family magazine, completed creative writing classes with the Writers' League of Texas, and serves on the board of the San Gabriel Writers League. To nourish his heart, mind and soul, Kerry has helped lead two non-profits, taught youth Sunday school for twenty years, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and currently leads church ministries focused on poverty, race relations, and environmental stewardship. He is retired and lives near Austin Texas, with his wife of more than thirty years. They have a grown daughter. More info available at www.KerryLStevens.com

Book preview

SPRING

Spring Prelude

Spring is the dawn of promise. It creates life when a tender shoot emerges from the dormant seed, eager to turn its leaves to the warming sun.

What will become of this seedling? Will she grow strong and healthy? Will the bees and butterflies be drawn to her beauty and fragrance? Will she be fruitful and release many offspring to the winds? Or will weeds and stormy weather choke out her life?

During the unpredictability of her spring, my mother struggled for breath as a child of the Great Depression and its flood of poverty. As a child of divorce and sexism, she withered in the drought of abandonment. But the vitality of spring also nourished her as a child of nature and God. These forces were her seedbed, bending and braiding her into a strong and independent woman.

I love my mother. Spring is the beginning of this love letter to her.

Chapter 1

A Leap for Love

I t was the summer of 1943 when most boys were at war, when I met him at the lake on my grandparents’ farm in Southern Michigan, reminisced my mother, Berthella Whitmyer. He was tall, tan, and slender, with a body that showed hard work. His blue eyes smiled in a friendly, mischievous way. I was struck by his unconscious attractiveness of goodness: good health, good looks, and good manners. And he was a farm boy!

The meeting shook my mother’s world. Then twenty-three years old, and a city girl, she’d dreamed of marrying a farm boy since she was a teen. She’d fallen in love with the summers spent on her grandparents’ farm and wanted that life for her own. This blue-eyed man named Mick, the same age as her, seemed to have it all. Mom didn’t want to miss this opportunity. But as Mick recalled, if he had not taken a dangerous leap, they would never have met.

My friend, Robert, and I were driving around on a Sunday afternoon two weeks before I met Berthella, Mick said. We ran across two other guys doing the same thing. They mentioned there were a couple of good-looking girls visiting Helen, a mutual friend. Robert drove by Helen’s house but didn’t want to stop. I wanted to meet the girls, so I opened the car door and jumped out. I figured that when my feet hit the ground, I’d start running. Instead, I went head-over-heels, rolling down the roadside. When I finally stopped rolling and saw no bones sticking out, I dusted off my clothes and walked up to Helen’s house.

Although my mother was not at Helen’s house that day, her sister, Joy, was there. When Robert eventually came back to pick up Mick, Robert invited Joy to go roller skating the next weekend. And when Joy and he returned home after their roller skating date, Robert met my mother.

Do you have any friends I could go out with? Mom asked. Robert said yes and set up a blind date between Mom and Mick. It was a picnic with a group of friends on Lafferty Lake, my mother’s sacred space on her grandparents’ farm. But there was a problem. Robert forgot to tell Mick it was a blind date. Mick thought it was just a picnic and an opportunity to meet girls. So he spent all afternoon with another girl.

I still remember him strolling through the lovely high meadow above the little lake with my sister’s really cute girlfriend, Mom recalled. His shirt was off. He was all brown, mannerly, and innocent-looking. By nightfall, in the woods at the wiener roast, I maneuvered to Mick’s side and asked him why he had ignored me all afternoon. After the misunderstanding was cleared up, Mick had a date with Mom for the following weekend.

One date led to two, then three, when Mom’s playfulness overshadowed her tact, as they swayed on her front porch swing one Sunday afternoon.

Mick, did you hear about the butcher who was grinding hamburger and suddenly had to go to the hospital? she asked.

No, what happened?

He got a little behind in his work, replied Mom, with a smirk.

Uh, okay… But why did he have to go to the hospital?

"That’s a joke. His behind got caught in the grinder… Isn’t that funny?"

Not really, Mick said, with a furrowed brow.

Well, is that because you’re a farmer?

Mom’s question hung over the conversation like gathering storm clouds. I didn’t think the joke was very funny, Mick said later. And I thought it was even less funny when Berthella insinuated the reason I didn’t like it was because I was a hick from the farm. After that, we didn’t go out any more.

Mom and her mother, Effie, had seen promise in this relationship and were disappointed when he no longer came around. So Effie took quick action and wrote the young man a letter.

It was a very complimentary letter, Mick said. She used terms like ‘four square’ and ‘yard wide,’ and said she thought very highly of me and would like to see me return. It had a tremendous impact. I wouldn’t have started dating Berthella again without it.

Mick didn’t smoke, drink, or swear. He was reliable and steady, and enjoyed fun things. He was so smart, he skipped third grade. He lived on a farm where he grew his own food. Mom’s earlier words of jest did not reflect her heart. She felt fortunate that Mick was tied to the farm and had not gone to the battlefield like most men. Their relationship was renewed.

In the summer, Mick took my mom to Lake Michigan where they stretched a blanket atop the sand dunes and listened to waves slap the shore. In fall, they picnicked in the woods on a carpet of crimson leaves, and then, come winter, strapped skates to their feet to glide across the frozen water of Lafferty Lake.

After two years of courtship, they made a covenant of love. It was the summer of 1945, and as WWII approached its end, my parents’ married life began. Berthella Whitmyer became Berthella Stevens.

Although she had been a bit homely as a young girl, with unruly hair and a crooked smile, Mom blossomed into a beautiful bride. Soft brown curls framed full lips and hazel eyes, encircled by wire-rimmed glasses. With a 24-inch waist and slender neck and shoulders, she was intellectually and physically smart.

Mom and Dad honeymooned at the lake where they first met. Dad rigged up a camera on a tripod to take pictures of them by pulling on a string tied to the shutter lever. In my favorite photo, sunbeams burn through the shade of the woods and alight on two lovebirds nestled together in a hammock strung between sturdy trees. Their arms are interlaced around each other’s shoulders and again across their waists, as my dad’s head lies gently on my mom’s shoulder. Their eyes are closed, with their minds seemingly dreaming of a beautiful future.

In the moment, as Dad cradled her in that hammock, neither of them realized this tender embrace which marked their genesis, would one day also mark their exodus. And Dad had no idea he would soon be forced to take another dangerous leap for Mom.

Chapter 2

Stolen Dreams

Dreams do come true. My father lived his dream on his farmstead near Bremen in Northern Indiana. My mother’s dream became real when she married and joined my father, returning to the bucolic life she enjoyed as a child on her grandparents’ farm. But without warning, in the light of day, their dream was ripped from their grasp, and their lives were uprooted. You see, nightmares come true, too.

Long before my father’s birth, the first settlers to his area tamed the chaos they found in the wildness. With strong backs and clever minds, they drained swamps, felled trees, and built roads and farms with their own hands. My father was born on one of those farms, ordained into a life of order.

The roads outlined the conventional lives of these farmers. Some paved and some gravel, they ran perfectly north/south, or east/west, forming precise one-mile squares. The north/south roads were named after trees, and occurred in alphabetical order: Ash, Beech, Cedar, Dogwood, Elm, etc. The east/west roads were named after men, also in alphabetical order. Working backwards were Tyler, Shively, Riley, Quarles, Pierce, etc. Inside each perfect square formed by trees and men was six hundred forty acres of mostly farmland and woods, dotted with the occasional farmhouse and punctuated by the calls of crows. It was an orderly community.

Farming was an orderly business. Farmers planted straight rows, erected straight fences, and hung straight gates and doors. Milking began at 5:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. every single day—rain or shine, in sickness or in health. Yards smelled of freshly mowed grass and gardens were well tended. Women, especially those from the Old Country of Belgium like my father’s mother, dressed in a crisp linen apron and kept a clean house. Clothes were washed on Monday and ironed on Tuesday, shopping occurred on Wednesday, baking on Friday. There was a time and place for everything. And it ran like clockwork. To keep a farm and family running smoothly, organization and conformity were valued and necessary traits.

This was my father’s life. Although my grandfather owned the farmland and buildings, they were promised to my dad, the youngest child, because his older siblings charted other paths for their lives. That certainty of farming was the bedrock on which my parents’ relationship was formed. There was no mistaking what the future held.

Pop, I’ve got to put in that new gate today in the bean field, said my dad one workday. Which way do you want it to swing?

I don’t care, his father replied. He was like his son—tall and strong. You’ll own the farm one day. Do it like you want.

The farmstead was connected to the county road by a straight lane nearly three football fields in length. It was a simple lane bordered by fenced fields on each side, just two tire tracks in the summer, but a sea of mud in the spring and a deep wall of white in winter. The farmhouse, a traditional two-story white clapboard, sat atop a small rise at the far end of the lane. It was conveniently located next to a water-pumping windmill, an outhouse, and a garden of healthy vegetables and tantalizing fruit. Across the grassy yard, beyond the ancient oaks where kids played hide-and-seek, was the heart of the farm, a tawny-red barn with neat white trim around the windows and doors. Perched on its gabled roof, five lightning rods stood silent guard with their little glass balls and sharp points.

Inside, miniature beams of light shined through cracks and illuminated particles of dust that danced with unseen scents of clover, manure, and the wisdom of aged wood. A castle of stacked hay bales filled the upper level with food for Dad’s seventeen Guernsey cows below, where they ate, slept, bellowed, and waited patiently to be milked. Tall metal cans stood like sentries in the milk house at one end of the barn, to be filled and chilled until Glen, the one-armed milkman, retrieved them every other day. Massive wooden beams, rough and hewn by hand many years before from trunks of trees, were bound together by wooden pegs, safely securing the life teeming within.

Outside, an earthen embankment protected by turf and gravel allowed my father and grandfather, toiling side-by-side, to move my dad’s machinery and hay from the driveway to the upper floor of the barn.

Surrounding the barn were six fields, about twenty acres each. In those fields, Dad knew what would be grown years in advance based on the rotation schedule designed to prevent nutrients from being depleted in the soil. A given field may have towering corn in year one, soybeans in year two, golden wheat and straw the next, followed by sweet alfalfa or clover hay, then open pasture for the cows, concluding with oats and straw in year six. Then the cycle repeated. Farming was an orderly business.

As an adult, my father still lived with his parents when he married my mother. Together, Dad and Mom had the second floor of the farmhouse to themselves, while my grandparents slept on the first floor, which also had a kitchen and living room. Electricity had recently been installed, and a fresh coat of white paint brightened the interior for the new bride. But there was no indoor plumbing or bathroom. Everyone sat on the cold wooden seat in the outhouse just as my mom had done on her grandparents’ farm. In these intimate living quarters, my mother and her in-laws began to learn more about each other.

My grandmother and grandfather emigrated from Belgium and brought with them customs unfamiliar to my mother. Men smoked cigars, played cards, and enjoyed whiskey, although my father was a teetotaler. My grandfather enjoyed a stiff drink so much that he distilled his own moonshine in the basement during Prohibition and sold it in nearby Mishawaka when my father was a child. For a Belgian, that was an honorable way to break the law. He transported the quart bottles in a full-length leather coat made from the hide of a cow that had suffocated when a straw pile collapsed on her. Each of the many inner pockets hid a flask of liquid fire. He excelled at this task and caught the eye of professional bootleggers who teamed up with him and dug a secret cave under his barn’s earthen embankment.

Early in their marriage, my straight-laced mother tired of these unfamiliar customs. As they sat on the edge of their iron bed on the second floor, I imagine Mom spoke quietly as she shared her growing concerns with Dad.

Mick, I certainly appreciate your folks letting us live here…but…but the whiskey! Don’t they understand drinking is immoral? And then I learn they even made it themselves.

Berthella, Pop hasn’t made moonshine since Prohibition ended…more than a decade ago.

Well, why didn’t you tell me about that before we were married? she asked, stopping before entertaining what she might have done differently. Then, without waiting for a response from Dad, she continued, And the cigar smoke. It’s difficult to even breathe when I’m downstairs. Who knows what that’ll do to any children we have? And I sure as heck don’t want the devil in this house playing cards with our kids. Do you know how hard it is to hold my tongue with your folks? Mom was on a roll and let it all out. And who do I have to talk with during the day? Sometimes when you’re out in the field, I just come up here and cry.

Although living on a farm had been Mom’s dream since childhood, the transition from single city life to married farm life was troubling. Before marriage, she had constant companionship with her sisters and mother who talked for hours and shared intimate details of their lives. She was used to walking to the store, to the library, or to visit friends in the city. With no phone and no one around to share her farm life, Mom felt isolated. She hungered for personal conversation. Her mother-in-law struggled with English and seldom spoke. Her father-in-law was a man of few words and seldom smiled. Dad constantly worked hard on the farm that would one day be his.

So Mom did what she knew. She walked the country roads, looking for other farm wives to talk with. Although Dad’s brother, Omer, and his wife, Mabel, lived on a farm across the road, the next nearest neighbor was a half-mile away. The dusty road on which she walked was sparsely traveled, used by an occasional tractor or an Amish horse and buggy, but not a woman walking by herself. Loneliness gripped my mother’s wandering heart as gravel crunched beneath her feet and a solitary red-winged blackbird scolded her from his fencepost perch. Although no one voiced it in her presence, neighbors and in-laws also passed judgment on her unusual behavior.

After a year of blended living, my father’s parents moved into a modest house they bought and transported to the opposite end of the lane near the road. Grandpa still owned the farm and wanted to be close by, but they couldn’t continue living in the same house with my mother. They said it was because she had a baby on the way and Dad and she needed more room for their expanding family.

Mom and Dad were in the business of making farmhands. My brother, Mike, arrived first in 1946, followed quickly by my brother, Pat. By the time the cries of Janet, their third child, were heard, Dad and Grandpa remodeled the kitchen and added a nice bathroom. In 1953, my brother, Tom, was born and the family had settled in. Mom made the house her own by painting over her in-laws’ staid white walls with Morning Glory Blue in the kitchen and pale yellow and mauve in the living room. When she tired of that, the living room came alive in bold Flamingo Red, which reflected her zest for life. The farmhouse was now hers to steward and soon the entire farm would belong to Dad and her.

My siblings thrived on the farm. As Mike and Pat grew, they worked alongside my dad, eventually taking on man-sized tasks. My father even bought a new tractor for my oldest brother when he was able to work independently. Mom gave all her children freedom to roam, the way she had on her grandparents’ farm.

Queenie, the family collie, was an excellent babysitter, said Mom. All I had to do was look out my kitchen window or step outside to locate her and I’d know where the children were.

We’d go wherever we wanted and do whatever we wanted to do, said Janet. We’d pick fruit, play in the yard, and gather eggs from the chickens.

We were pretty much released on our own, Pat said. When we weren’t working, we played in the barn’s haymow. I got seriously hurt a couple times when I fell down a hay chute and hit my head. It didn’t seem to bother Mom too much.

Freedom wasn’t limited to the outdoors. One time, Mike and I were making gunpowder in the kitchen for our rockets, recalled Pat. For some reason, we had a candle on the table and somehow the whole mixture lit up with huge balls of yellow fire and acrid sulfur smoke in the middle of the kitchen. It melted the Formica on the tabletop and nearly burned the house down before we got the fire put out. I was surprised by Mom’s reaction. She didn’t get mad because we had done something wrong. Her concern was that we hadn’t taken the right precautions in doing it.

Part of Mom’s subdued response may have stemmed from the way she kept house. Certainly having a passel of kids would have been a chore in itself, but a clean house had not been a priority when she grew up and it was not a priority in her own home. Very casual would be a polite descriptor; nothing was organized. She struggled to find the right balance. I grew up believing that happiness, good times, culture, and education came before work, she said.

Because children and education came first, there was always something for Mom to put off and she devised shortcuts such as doors shut on rooms with unmade beds, or leftovers shoved to the back of the refrigerator until they were spoiled enough to throw away. Why have floors which were clean enough to eat off of when we had a table for that purpose? Mom explained.

Mom had her priorities. There had to be time for books that cried out to be read; time for the neighbor with no one to talk to; time for the lake that needed swimmers, not to mention the ant hill waiting to be studied. As a result, there were days and days when nothing got done around the house—at least not anything her Old World in-laws could see.

My grandparents did take note, not only of Mom’s behavior but its contrast with their other daughter-in-law, Mabel, who lived across the road. Mabel washed clothes on Monday, ironed them on Tuesday, and went shopping on Wednesday along with my grandfather and grandmother. They all purchased the same things, at the same stores. Mabel, like my mother, was raising children, but her house was immaculate, and she wore a nice linen apron while she worked.

While I never heard outright that my in-laws called me shiftless, Mom said, "I certainly had that impression. And I fretted over the fact that I was not perfect in their eyes. But the Old Country idea that a woman must first of all be a perfect housekeeper and lastly a mother, didn’t sit well with me. With a farmhouse, chores, and large family, our home was not the beautiful spick-and-span home in the magazines. My firm conviction was that life was for living and not just for keeping house.

Mick was fond of saying, ‘Hard work never hurt anyone.’ Although I think that creed started the Stevens’ dynasty, I didn’t agree that work came first, and my nonconformity caused much trouble in our family.

Although Mom’s children came before her housework, so did her own social and intellectual stimulation. Television was new and Mom was aware of a daily quiz show for women called Cinderella Weekend. The winner got a trip for two to New York City. She dreamed of winning and taking her first plane ride. When she and my siblings worked outdoors and the sun glinted off the silver wings of a plane overhead she’d look up and say, There goes Mama. There goes Mama to New York City.

In the summer of 1954, her fantasy came alive when the local TV station approved her contestant application. The contest consisted of four women a day answering questions of general interest with a stop button that shut out others’ responses, Mom recalled. The daily winners of the first four days of the week came together to compete on Friday of each week, and the four weekly winners met on the last Friday to determine the winner of the month, who won the trip to New York City.

Mom believed she was up against some formidable foes. She clutched an encyclopedia volume even as she cared for her family. She studied hard and scorched a meal or two along the way. Nobody knew what was going to be asked, she said. So I just tried to remember as many trivial facts as I could and studied various topics.

She appeared on a Thursday show, and the neighbors with televisions were glued to their sets. She had momentarily transformed herself from a curiosity to a celebrity. My oldest brother, Mike, who attended nearby Madison School, was allowed to go to the office and watch Mom win that daily contest on the live, black-and-white TV program.

She returned the following day to compete against the other daily winners. As the show began, the emcee, Lew Wood, asked the contestants what had happened since they last appeared on the show. Mom volunteered, During the show yesterday, my neighbor’s barn caught fire and he tried to call the fire department, but the telephone exchange operator wouldn’t answer his call because she was watching this show. So, he had to drive to a telephone in the neighboring exchange to reach the fire department. In the meantime, his barn burned down.

While her account lingered in the air like smoke, Mom won the weekly contest. When she returned to compete in the monthly game, Mr. Wood pulled her aside before the show began. The operator of your telephone exchange arrived in my office after your last appearance, he said. She had her lawyer with her and threatened to sue the station. Please don’t share any more stories. Mom kept quiet this time except when it came to answering the quiz questions, trouncing her competition for a third time and winning the coveted trip.

Once in New York, she and Dad stayed on the move. They rode to the ear-popping top of the Empire State Building, climbed the Statue of Liberty, and were mesmerized by the precise dancing and skimpy costumes of the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. They enjoyed breakfast overlooking Fifth Avenue and were entertained by the lively music of Xavier Cugat and his orchestra. Mom was bitten by the travel bug and never recovered. The enticement of new places, new people, and new things forever animated her life.

Although she enjoyed her taste of travel, Mom loved children even more, so she and Dad continued to create future farmhands. After a difficult stillbirth, I was conceived and born in 1958, twelve years younger than the firstborn. Although all of us Stevens children were blonde haired and blue-eyed, I arrived with a fuzzy head of black hair, earning the permanent nickname Fuzz.

Mom’s sisters had children as well, and our farm became the gathering place for my mom’s side of the family, just as her grandparents’ farm had once been. Whether it was holidays, week-long stays in the summer, or just a place to get away from city life, the Stevens’ farm was everybody’s favorite. Aunt Berthella was the strength and heart of the family, recalled my cousin, Debby. That’s where we went: to Mick and Berthella’s house. It was a place of comfort, especially for the sisters who had gone through so much growing up. The farm was a place for them to renew their bond with each other.

When Mom’s mother, Effie, showed up, so did talk of religion. They would argue for hours about the Bible, recalled my brother, Pat. Arguments about simple pronouns, like which one was correct and what each meant. Is it ‘this is of the Lord’, or is it ‘from the Lord?’ They weren’t tearing each other down but enhancing knowledge and trying to figure something out by the end of the day. They were iron sharpening iron, as the Bible says.¹

Thoughts of Armageddon, the calamitous end times, were never far away. Mom wrote a letter to Effie about the remodeling her father-in-law planned for their farmhouse:

Pop was up here measuring and figuring out the bathroom and kitchen again. We’re drawing plans; we have some good ones, too. He talks like he’s going to start pretty soon. Of course, some of the Stevens’ are trying to talk him out of it. If we do get it fixed up nice here, I’ll be torn between wishing Armageddon would hold off for a while and wishing it would hurry up and get over with.

Mom was thinking of the time of turmoil which she believed the entire world would one day experience during Christ’s thousand-year reign, culminating in the resurrection. What she didn’t know was that her personal Armageddon would arrive far sooner. She knew she was the family member who colored outside the lines in the Stevens’ coloring book—in bold colors like Flamingo Red. However, she was unprepared for the extent to which her father-in-law would go to prevent her picture from being drawn.

I have an image in my mind of my grandfather walking up the lane, the gravel crunched beneath his feet. The sun was rising above the corncrib and the rooster alerted his flock to the start of a new beginning. His expression was serious, a bit more than usual. My father emerged from the barn after milking, and the two men stood face to face.

Mick, he said. He turned away momentarily, unable to look my father in the eye. I know I told you that you would one day own this farm. And I know you’ve bought all this equipment and your animals…and you’ve been workin’ hard and looking forward to that day… He glanced at his boots before continuing. But that isn’t going to happen. I’ve decided to give the farm to your brother and his wife—to Omer and Mabel. I need you to move out in three months.

Then he turned, put his hands in his pockets, and stared at the ground as he ambled slowly back down the lane to his house. The dirty deed was done. There would be no more nonconformity on the Stevens’ farm.

My father must have lost his breath, like he’d been kicked in the gut. Maybe for once his tearless eyes streamed with warm, salty water. Maybe he squeezed his weather-worn hands tightly together so he wouldn’t pass out. Maybe if he thought no one was looking, he would have stared skyward before collapsing to his knees onto the earth on which his life depended.

The farm was Dad’s past, present, and future. It was the very foundation on which he built his family. It shaped the only person he knew how to be. How could my father steal our dream?

I don’t know the conversation Dad had with Mom when he walked into the house. But she, too, felt the earth shake, while bearing the burden of presumed responsibility.

From their calamity, Mom catapulted into a frantic search for another farm in the neighborhood. She and Dad wanted the kids to remain in Madison School. But families clung to their properties to hand down to their children. Because no farm was for sale or rent, farmer would no longer be Dad’s title. He arranged to auction off his equipment and animals.

With bold letters of a bold proclamation, the sale bills posted around the community read:

PUBLIC SALE. Having decided to quit farming, I will sell at Public Auction.

But if they had been honest, the sale bills would have declared instead:

PUBLIC SALE. Because my father betrayed me and stole the hopes and dreams of my entire family, I will sell at Public Auction.

The sale took place two days before my first birthday. As friends, neighbors, and strangers loitered on the lawn like vultures, it commenced with the familiar rapid-fire chant of the auctioneer.

"Who’ll give me a hundred dollars?

One hundred dollar bid, now two,

now two, will ya’ give me two?

---

"Two hundred dollar bid, now three,

now three hundred, will ya’ give me three?

---

"Two hundred, two and a half, two-fifty,

How about two-fifty? fifty? fifty? fifty? I got it!

---

"How about two sixty? sixty? sixty?

I’ve got two sixty, now seventy?

How about seventy? two-seventy?"²

By the end of the day, only memories remained.

A brand new 1958 Ford 861 tractor my dad bought because my brother Mike was old enough to work independently was driven away. The three-bottom 16" Ford plow used to till the ground, turned over to a new owner. A corn planter that pressed into the soil seeds that would produce stalks that reached for the sky, moved to another man’s earth. A combine, which harvested wheat and oats, was reaped by other farmers.

Twelve gray milk cans that once held white gold until Glen, the one-armed milkman could pick them up, evaporated. The Surge milkers, which rhythmically withdrew the intimate gift from their cows, were sucked up by another dairyman. And the 2,000 bales of scratchy hay and straw, all cut, baled, and stacked by my family’s hands, became the pleasures of other animals.

These and other pieces of equipment were tools of the trade. They were mostly just objects, but they were my father’s lifeblood. That day, his heart emptied.

Chapter 3

Broken Promises

Spring is calling.

I hear her in the rippling waters

Under an ice-covered stream.

I hear her in the fluttering of the birds

Through leafless trees.

I hear her in the winds that blow

Over barren fields.

Spring is calling.

—Spring is Calling, Berthella Whitmyer, circa 1935

My mother dared to be herself on our family farm and it cost the family dearly.